...I confess. And I believe.

God, let us be a bridge of care connecting people everywhere.

Help us confront all fear and hate and lust for power that separate.

When chasms widen, storms arise, O Holy Spirit, make us wise.

Let our resolve, like steel, be strong to stand with those who suffer wrong.

---Ruth Duck, 1991

I confess today. I have been small, and I have limited my idea of God to smallness. I have hated those who were other, and feared those I hated…or did it work the other way around? I don’t want power in my own hands, that is too heavy a thing; I just want things to work the right way, my way. I confess this yearning for a finger in the pot.

My God, I pray for the things that separate me from serving and standing resolutely with those who suffer to yield to wisdom from you. I pray for the fears and doubts that keep me shackled when I should be about kingdom business to yield to the floods of your hope and healing love.

And I believe. I believe that at your table, transformation is an everyday miracle, and grace is served at every meal. We may come to the table as strangers, lonely and weak and worn, but we leave as friends, strengthened for the challenges of building family and standing with each other.

I confess. And I believe.

...do you believe something?

O come to us; abide with us,
our Lord Emmanuel.
---Phillips Brooks, 1868

"I don't believe in anything. Do you believe something, Ms. Armstrong?" The teenage question was casual, almost throw-away; but there was already a life's worth of pain and betrayal in the carefully-controlled voice, the meaning of life bound up in the few words. I knew my answer had to be truth. And it had to be clear. Oh, and it had to be right then. Because life happens, well, at the speed of life. And I knew she'd already heard plenty of sermons. And lectures. And object lessons.

And she did not believe. Not one thing. 

And while I gathered up the pieces of my heart from where they'd fallen as it shattered, once again, at a broken world that does this to its kids, I slowed my breathing, and gathered my racing thoughts, and stilled my heart, and breathed a prayer. Wisdom, I prayed. Courage, I pleaded. Hope, I begged. Love, love, love, past pain, past failure, past bleak unbelief. And in I plunged.

"I do believe. Not in a God who micromanages the world and every little thing that goes on in it. I have seen too much hurt and pain in this world to believe that way about God. I can't be down with God pulling all the strings behind a world like this. But I do believe. I believe so much in a God that walks this life beside us, hurting with us when we hurt, and celebrating with us when we celebrate. This is the life with God I have experienced, and I can tell you I believe it."

"Well, I know you're right about the world, Ms. Armstrong."

God help us, I'm right about the world. God willing, I'm right about walking together. Here in this holy season, we anticipate the arrival of a God whose name is Emmanuel, 'God with us'. Not some God-up-there, or God-that-was, or God-with-a-carrot-and-a-stick. But God-here laughing at an inside joke,  God-here weeping at the pain of a hurting world, God-here when the path is the most difficult to discern. God-here God-now. Close as breath. Abiding. Emmanuel.

I believe.